lets just get it straight silly. You haven't got a fucken clue who i am. Ok. Name one person that you think knows me. What is really sad, is pretending that you know anonymous strangers on the internet, in lieu of actually providing solid proof for your belief system, which is what the thread, and natural science, is about. Ad hom won't cut it in here, clearly, after three and a half thousand replies.

My wide circle of friends is due to my manners, mutual respect, honesty and will to be a better person. To having remorse and some sort of integrity about myself. To actually try and be considerate of other people.

You're a flat earth troll, the epitome of siliness

Really? How's your mate "PMM" you know, the one with the motorcycling dad...

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China has offered you both proof and ways of gaining proof. I'm not nearly as eloquent as him so if you won't listen to him, you're definately not going to listen to me.

I think people have gone past the point of trying to seriously engage with you now Paul, what with all the name calling and cryptic insults. You've even been pretty condescending to China and he has been measured and informative throughout this thread. What's wrong with you. He has gone out of his way to add to this topic and you've just taken the piss.

I've come to the conclusion based on the consistent evidence presented in this thread that you're just plain nasty. A wrongun who thinks he's being a little more clever than he actually is.

You twist words and home in on details of no significance to steer the conversation and get out of corners.

I am going to waste 20 minutes of my life discussing this as I think it may be worthwhile.

Firstly the quote PGW put up clearly isn't anonymous, it is sourced in detail.

Now I will acknowledge that PGW does later admit that when he says it's anonymous, he means he doesn't know it is Orwell, and that the source is irrelevant, it is the reasoning put forward which is important.

I will agree with PGW on that.

But need he have claimed that he doesn't know the source is Orwell. I am willing to state that these are the words written by Orwell in 1946 and published in the Tribune on the date quoted.

Can I provide logical proof of this. Of course not. Such a demand is unreasonable and illogical in itself - proof only exists (and only to a limited extent - go and read Godel) in pure mathematics where axioms are defined with a rigour which is impossible to replicate in the real world.

The evidence-based sciences (and history and motorcycle maintenance are evidence based applications of reason and logic to better understand the world) do not and cannot expect to supply proof. They use evidence to make useful statements about the world.

So how can we bring evidence to bear on Orwell's writings. Well, we can go to sources.

In Front of Your Nose, 1945-1950 (Collected Essays, Journalism & Letters, Vol. 4) was first published in 1968. If you use a friendly search engine you can (illegally, but usefully) find a pdf of it on line here and on PFD page 280 printed page 259 you will find an essay As I Please from which PGW's quote came. Do read it, it provides a reasonable justification as to why it is reasonable to accept the earth is a sphere.

Is one source enough? How likely is it that this is fake? How unreasonable would you have to be to insist this isn't convincing evidence.

Google books has a searchable version of it, as does Amazon and if you type in "Oval Earth man" into the search you will find the same story.

Is this "proof" - no, of course not, Orwell might not have written the story, nicking it from some drunk in the pub, it could be a vast conspiracy etc etc etc. We've been there done that 1000 times in this thread.

But when weighing the evidence is it reasonable to conclude the Orwell wrote these words? Clearly it is.

PGW could have done a bit of work, actually investigated, and easily discovered this evidence. He didn't.

He claims this thread is meant to be about science and accuses others of being religious fanatics.

Ah, the irony.

Science takes work. It is hard, but its benefits accrue to all of us - if we accept them. The efforts of others allow us labour saving devices, leisure and entertainment and a deeper understanding of the universe than religions can ever give us.

How do we know the earth is a globe?

Because with patience we can measure it.

We can measure the change in the dip of the horizon as our elevation changes.

How sun-rise, sun-sets and noons change as we move North and South.

How the stars rotate clockwise about Polaris in the Northern hemisphere and anti-clockwise close to the Southern Cross in the Southern; and change their position in regular ways as we move about the earth. Hence allowing us to use solar or stellar observations and spherical mathematics to navigate successfully about the world.

We can also use mathematical-mechanics to explain how a Foucault's Pendulum rotates at different rates at different latitudes

You could do all these things as a lonely isolated individual and come to a reasonable conclusion about the shape of the earth.

Or you could be lazy and pretend you know what science is while not doing it, and refusing to accept the evidence presented by those who have.

Who those people are doesn't matter - there is the evidence they have collected and presented to mankind over literally millennia. That accumulation of knowledge contained much much error, but overtime the error in the measurements reduced until now we can now where we are on this sphere of ours to an accuracy of millimetres.

Closing your eyes to that evidence and the predictive ability this knowledge has given us isn't scientific. It is blinkered, deliberate obscurantism.

PGW doesn't engage with science, isn't reasonable, or evidence based, but he is sadly right that there isn't a lot of science in this thread. People, stick to the issue and not the ad hominen - what the evidence is, whether that evidence is of good enough standard to be useable (ie it definitely doesn't have to be perfect, just good enough) and whether it is reasonable to reject the conclusions of that evidence.

PGW didn't need to claim ignorance about Orwell's authorship. He could have used his abilities to source the quote. It is very typical of him not to have bothered.

When is it reasonable to accept or reject evidence. That is a scientific question, and one PGW seems very unwilling to discuss.

Here's a simple case. PGW - are you willing to agree Orwell is the source for the quote you posted?